I was late coming to these books. I found a lot of my colleagues had read them at school but I recall we had Prester John and King Solomen's Mines. However, I consider this collection, together with Lord of The Rings to be the "crème de la crème" of Fantasy Fiction. Evil and Good battling throughout all of the books. And what incredible characters! Mervyn Peake has obviously used his past experience of War to create and draw situations that are "unbelieveable" and credulous at the same time. Could not put them down when I eventually started reading them and Oh! how they troubled my imagination! Could not get his characters out of my head for ages! A true Master of the genre in my opinion.